Tuesday 23rd September 2008

I moved back to Cardiff last week, and to get my room sorted has taken a few days (between other stuff, obviously). The last thing I needed to get to sort it completely was a decent desk. So, I decided earlier to drive to Ikea to pick one up. Obviously, I looked up where I needed to go. I thought that I’d got it all worked out. That it’d be a simple matter of going left, right, left again and parking up outside the shop to get a shiny new desk. I was wrong. I got lost instead.

Initially, I started thinking about Backtrackin’, about trying to work out where I went wrong and how to get back on the right track. In fact, I did get back on the right road fairly quickly, only to make another wrong turning and end up in places I’d never seen before and didn’t know where they were in relation to Ikea (or, indeed, Cardiff). At that point, I decided to rely on the tactic of taking what seemed to be the be the best turnings. I guessed, basically. Now, I have no doubt that some of those decisions made the situation worse. I have no doubt that if I stopped, got a map from somewhere (I only have an A-Z in the car. A Birmingham A-Z…) and worked out what to do, I could’ve probably got back on track much quicker, and at less cost (£1.10! A litre!). But, I carried on. Couldn’t be bothered with stopping.

I actually started to enjoy the journey. Sure, I wasn’t getting where I wanted to go. I was getting rather hungry, was using up expensive petrol and probably getting further away from Cardiff; but it was quite enjoyable in a perverse way. I jest kept driving along, taking a turn when I felt like it and hoping that it’d get me to somewhere I at least recognised. Ikea really wasn’t the main objective at this point, just a “it’d be nice if I get there” sort of thing.

Eventually, I got somewhere I recognised. And, as somewhat of an aside, I love that feeling of joy when you go from being utterly lost to knowing where you are. Especially when it’s literally a case of turning a corner, you just think “wow, that wasn’t so hard, was it?”.

Anyway, once I was somewhere that I recognised, it suddenly becamae a possibility. I started to plan, to hope. Maybe if I try such-and-such instead, I’ll get there. Maybe it’ll be different this time. Only one way to find out!